Contest Apps for Twitter: A Quick Guide for Businesses

Contest Apps for Twitter are an easy way to gain Twitter followers, boost brand awareness on Twitter and generate new leads for your business. In this article we’ll discuss several contest apps for Twitter, how they work and how you can use them to grow your business.

What is a Contest App for Twitter? What does it do?

Contest Apps for Twitter allow you to automate and make possible a number of requirements for running a Twitter contest. These include automatically building a hosted contest entry page with the look-and-feel of your Twitter account, built-in forms for capturing contest entrant’s information, like name and email address, and built-in Twitter Connect and share buttons that allow your contest to grow.

Twitter Connect is Twitter’s proprietary user login method. A contest app for Twitter like Wishpond’s allows users to enter Twitter contests using their Twitter Login, just like when you sign up for a website account using Twitter. This allows Wishpond’s contest apps for Twitter to do some amazing things to help businesses:

You can enable “Follow-Gating” - in which users must follow your Twitter account to enter your contest

You can enable entrants to automatically post a customized Tweet to their friends and followers with a link back to your contest

You can see who your entrants follow on Twitter and create targeted lists of users inside your Wishpond Contact Database

Types of Contest Apps for Twitter

A Sweepstake is the simplest type of contest - users submit their email address, click ‘Enter Contest’ and they’re entered into a random drawing for a prize. This is the best type of contest app for Twitter to start with if you don’t have many followers on your Twitter profile page.

A Vote Contest is the easiest way to get users to interact with your brand in a personal way. These can be used to vote for which products should appear in your next product line or go on sale next season.

Photo Contests are an easy way to entice users to upload a photo and have the community vote on their favorite to win. With the popularity of camera phones these days, taking a photo is a very easy thing for most users to do. To maximize entries, choose a photo theme that is easy for most users to get a photo of.

Also - photos are the best type of content, as they are eye-catching and are easy to digest, so this is the most recommended type of contest that requires user-generated content.

Photo Caption Contests entice users to write a caption (title) for a photo that you upload to enter. The community then votes on their favorite to win. This is an easy way to take advantage of online memes, which are becoming incredibly popular on sites such as Reddit and 9GAG.

An Essay Contest is a great way to get entrants to submit their thoughts, feedback and stories for a chance to win. You can have entrants write about an experience they had using one of your products or at one of your physical locations. The community can then on their favorite entry to win.

Entice users to create a video to enter to win a prize. This is bit harder to do than simply taking a photo, but it has the potential to give you great user content for your brand. The community votes on their favorite entry to win.

Pinterest Contests entice users to create a board on Pinterest and submit the link to enter. The community then votes on their favorite to win. This is a great contest option, as it gives your brand reach on both Twitter and Pinterest.

A Group Offer is a great way to get users paying money right now in order to take advantage or a limited-time offer. These deals normally require offering a minimum discount of 40% off a regularly-priced item in order to make them attractive enough for users to purchase right away.

Why use a Contest App for Twitter?

There are three main benefits you can achieve by running a contest app on Twitter:

Contest Apps for Twitter are a fast & easy way to increase Twitter followers. Their built-in follow-gating option allows you to ask users to follow your Twitter account to enter in the contest app.

Boost brand awareness by having users post a custom Tweet that includes your Twitter handle or branded hashtag. Although this will not drive new sales over night, it will long-term. When a person shares about a brand they are giving a social recommendation to their friends about it. This means that next time their friends are going to purchase something within that brand’s industry they will be more likely to purchase from them, as theyi friend has already recommended the.

Get new leads to convert into sales. Every person who enters your contest gives you their email address, name and other personal information. And as they have entered a contest from your business, they have shown interest in your brand and products, making it highly likely they’re interest in buying from you. To convert entrants into sales simply send them follow-up emails with incentives for their first-time purchase!